No nation ever drove out its people without loss, as witness Spain and France with their Protestants and Huguenots. England took them, and they helped to make her great. Often when a nation has actually been conquered in war, she in turn conquers her victors and is made better. Germany conquered Rome; but Roman laws and Roman government conquered the invaders, and made Germany the mother of modern civilization. Norsemen, Danes, and Saxons invaded Britain, and drenched her fields in blood. The Normans brought their beef, their mutton, and their pork, but the English kept their oxen, sheep, and swine; and eventually from the Norman, Dane, and others came the Anglo-Saxon race. England has four times as much inventive genius as the rest of Europe, but America has ten times as much as England; and why? Because added to the English colony is all Europe; and in our own people we have the practical Englishman, the thoughtful German, the metaphysical Scot, the quick-witted Irishman, the sprightly Gaul, the musical and artistic Italian, the hardy Swiss, the frugal and clear-headed Swede and Norwegian; and all united make the type which the world will yet come to, the manhood which will recognize the inherent nobility of the race, its brotherhood, and the great God, Father.
A TYPICAL SOD HOUSE.
Page 61.
V.
THE ODDITIES OF THE FRONTIER.
As the waves of the sea cast up all sorts of things, so the waves of humanity that flood the frontiers cast up all sorts and conditions of men. To go into a sod house and find a theological library belonging to the early part of the century, or to hear coming up through the ground a composition by Beethoven played on a piano, is a startling experience; so are some of the questions and assertions that one hears in a frontier Sunday-school.
I remember one old man who was in class when we were studying that part of the Acts of the Apostles where the disciples said, "It is not reason that we should leave the word of God and serve tables;" the old fellow said, "I have an idee that them tables was the two tables of stone that Moses brought down from the Mount." This was a stunner. I thought afterwards that the old man had an idea that they were to leave the law and stick to the gospel; but still it did not seem right to pick out men to serve the tables if that was what he meant.
Another would be satisfied with nothing but the literal meaning of everything he read. So when I explained to the class the modern idea of the Red Sea being driven by the wind so as to leave a road for light-laden people to walk over, the old man was up in arms at once, "Why," said he, "it says a wall;" and no doubt the pictures which he had seen in his youth, of the children of Israel walking with bottle-green waters straight as two walls on either side, and the reading of a celebrated preacher's sermon, where it spoke of the fish coming up to peep at the little children, as if they would like a nibble, confirmed the old man in his views.